Policewoman leaves a trail of mystery

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KABUL Sgt. Nargis went to work Monday with murder on her mind.

By the end of the morning, she would succeed, becoming responsible for this year's 62nd insider killing, in which Afghan security forces have killed U.S. or other coalition personnel. Such killings have greatly increased this year, but Nargis' killing of a U.S. police adviser, Joseph Griffin, 49, of Mansfield, Ga., ranks among the strangest.

Was she a foreign agent, as officials suggested Tuesday after they found her Iranian passport at home? Was she mentally ill?

The first theories, that she was either a jilted lover or a Taliban infiltrator, were rejected by the authorities Tuesday, but even her interrogators were left perplexed by her motives.

Making the case even stranger was her job: a uniformed police officer attached to the Interior Ministry's legal and gender equality unit, a plum job, one that is entirely underwritten by American and European aid and earmarked specifically for women's rights issues.

All she would tell her interrogators was that she went to work aiming to kill someone important.

Her first stop was the Interior Ministry compound in downtown Kabul, where her own office was located. Police Gen. Mohammad Zaher, the director of the criminal investigation division, said she told questioners she had prowled the compound looking for someone important enough to kill, passing on two foreign aid workers who had been gathering warm clothing for refugee children and were looking for help to distribute it.

“She said she thought they were not worth killing,” Zaher said.

Instead, she went around the corner, about half a mile away, to the compound that includes the Kabul police headquarters and the Kabul governor's office.

She first went to the restroom in police headquarters, where she removed the gun from under her clothing and put it in her pocket. She then tried to get into the governor's office but was turned away because she had no appointment. Next she tried the police chief's office, and again was turned away.

On the ground floor, she encountered Griffin, an employee of DynCorp International who had been working with the police as a trainer since July 2011.

According to police accounts, she came up behind Griffin and shot him in the head.

Afghan officials at a news conference produced a copy of her Iranian passport, which showed she was 33 and had only one name.

Intriguingly, Nargis returned less than a month ago from a monthlong training program in Egypt. While on that course with other female officers, she disappeared for two days without ever giving a satisfactory explanation, a police official said.

The only thing Afghan officials were sure of was that she was not a Taliban infiltrator. Even the Taliban did not claim that in a statement quoting a spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid.

But Mujahid said such attacks had been on the increase not only by Taliban infiltrators but also by “Afghan soldiers who have an awakened conscience and feeling against the occupation forces.”

That resonated with one police commander close to the case. Either that, he said, or “she was just nuts.”

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